


I love the way you social media

by wwwinteriscoming



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: AKA The Kiss didn't happen, Get Together, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Not Canon Compliant, Pies, Pining, Twitter, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 07:08:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6647314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wwwinteriscoming/pseuds/wwwinteriscoming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A couple weeks into the fall semester, it’s Bitty’s birthday. Jack doesn’t know what to get him. At all. He knows he isn’t the world most empathic person. But he really wants to get Bitty something that shows he appreciates him. Which is how he ends up with “Samwell baking vlog” typed in his Google search bar. And he didn’t expect it to be, but it’s so easy to find Bitty’s Youtube and scroll down it to find a baked good that looks like he might be able to make and put “Happy Birthday” on. It isn’t. There’s a chocolate cake that’s quite easy and, as Bittle says, “You can do whatever you want with this, guys! It’s wonderful! A none too special cake made all special, because it’s become personal,” he smiles at the camera and Jack blushes a bit when he cuts the happy birthday shape and scatters powder sugar over it, but it actually looks nice. Like, tasty and like he put work in it. That’s what he was going for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I love the way you social media

**Author's Note:**

> Graduation didn't happen. There was no kiss. Our boys are still both idiots.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: Characters belong to Ngozi from her webcomic Check, Please! (omgcheckplease.tumblr.com)

A couple weeks into the fall semester, it’s Bitty’s birthday. Jack doesn’t know what to get him. At all. He knows he isn’t the world most empathic person. But he really wants to get Bitty something that shows he appreciates him. Which is how he ends up with “Samwell baking vlog” typed in his Google search bar. And he didn’t expect it to be, but it’s so easy to find Bitty’s Youtube and scroll down it to find a baked good that looks like he might be able to make and put “Happy Birthday” on. It isn’t. There’s a chocolate cake that’s quite easy and, as Bittle says, “You can do whatever you want with this, guys! It’s wonderful! A none too special cake made all special, because it’s become personal,” he smiles at the camera and Jack blushes a bit when he cuts the happy birthday shape and scatters powder sugar over it, but it actually looks nice. Like, tasty and like he put work in it. That’s what he was going for. 

What he was not going for was Bitty crying when he got the cake, but he’s ninety nine percent sure they’re happy tears and when he verifies, Bitty snuffles out.. An affirmative sounding noise, so Jack’s pretty pleased with himself as he watches Bitty receive a long line of other presents and catches him looking back at the table with the cake every now and then. 

After that, when he’s had a tough day or his apartment’s too quiet or he misses Samwell/the Haus/Faber/Bitty himself, he pulls up his Youtube page and listens to Bitty talk. Sometimes he watches and listens intently. Sometimes he’ll put it on as background noise to something else. It steadies and soothes him, too. Sometimes he’ll do breathing exercises with Bitty laughing in the background and it lightens the weight on both his heart and shoulders. 

He starts baking something for Bitty every time he manages to get back to the Haus and it’s worth the dozen failures he sometimes suffers through to see a blush spread from his cheeks to the tips of his ears and down his neck. Sometimes he’ll catch himself wanting to see just how far the blush goes. Then he steels himself and says something potentially insensitive to one of the frogs, which Bitty glares at him for before scurrying off to fix it. He can handle the glares (a little) better. 

The problematic thing about the vlogs is that they’ve ingrained themselves in his routines. That he’s come to depend on them. And that every minute he listens to Bitty is filled with things that make both his budding love and his desire to hear him talk potentially forever grow steadily. 

It’s just.. Bitty himself. Jack doesn’t understand that not all the boys (and girls and older people and maybe pets) that watch his vlogs are completely smitten with him, because he’s basically just a guy talking to his camera, but he manages to make it sound and look as though he’s confiding in you personally. That he’s trusting you with this information. That he wants you to know. So Jack holds it all back when he meets Bitty, because Jack is misinterpreting everything. Bitty and he are friends. He’s not denying that. It’s just not because he knows all this stuff about Bitty now and that it’s made the crush he had on him back at Samwell seem like an ant compared to the mountain of feelings that’s threatening to crush his heart.

He started from the last vlogs, so the first few weeks it’s the Bitty he’s intimately familiar with, the Bitty he knows every line and facial expression and tone of voice of and he had an awful crush on. Then he gets to the Bitty he was his asshole self to and a new mountain, one of guilt, begins to grow next to the feelings one and Jack isn’t sure whether his rib cage has enough place for everything he’s feeling, but that’s the effect Bitty’s always seemed to have had on him, even if he couldn’t deal with it at first and took it out in a very negative and wrong way on Bitty himself. He’s amazed at how Bitty took his three hundred sixty degree change in behavior in stride and not once demanded explanations or apologies. For not the first time, he wonders how something can be so much the embodiment of everything good in the world.

When he gets to the “Never fall for a straight guy” bit, he runs a little too long and a little too fast and strains his arms lifting, but there’s still a lot of restless energy that would really like to find rest in a deserved punch to someone’s face. He hopes Bitty is over whoever this is. He hopes this person realized what a gift Bitty is. 

Because listening to and looking at little Bitty isn’t enough anymore after a while (even though he was incredibly cute. Like, Jack doesn’t use the word cute, but he was. All gangly and wiry and blond curls and freckles.) So Jack makes a Twitter. He’s really cool about it, too, but that might be, because he just copies the format of his username off his team mates. Twitter should be pleased @JZimmFalcs has joined. He follows Bitty and the little updates everyday make him smile at his phone, the kind of smile that sometimes stings as much as it soothes, because his cheeks always hurt a bit and it makes him wonder how long it’s been since he last smiled this wide. Until a few weeks into using Twitter. Then the smile comes easily and he feels like a million dollars. Bitty isn’t even here. Bitty hasn’t even got a clue, but he’s making Jack’s day. Jack’s life. So much better and he’ll forever be grateful.

A couple days after that, he finally manages to make it back to the Haus again and he’s made quite the intricate pie and he’s proud of himself and weirdly nervous as he knocks on the door. He actually knocks on the door. He’s never done that. Nobody has ever done that. Bitty comes out and shuts the door again, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes at him.

“Jack Laurent Zimmerman,” he starts (damn it, Shitty!) “You are not entering this house until you clarify some things for me,” he says, poking Jack in the chest and Jack figures he’s trying to look stern, but he just looks a little comical with the deep crease between his eyebrows and the narrowed eyes and the un-Bittlelike posture so he huffs out a laugh. “You do realize I could, like, just pick you up and put you aside eh,” Jack said as serious as possible. “You..” Bitty was midway an offended gasp, when he seemed to catch on to the smell. His eyes dropped from Jack’s eyes to a nanosecond on his lips to the plate he was holding.

“Oh my, Jack! She’s beautiful!” He exclaimed, carefully taking the plate out of his hands. “This worked out so well! Late november 2012, right?” Bitty said, looking up at him through his lashes, the picture of innocence. 

Jack swallowed, rooted to the spot. He hadn’t really thought about whether Bitty knew whether he was watching his vlogs, whether Bitty would mind or not.. Which, in hindsight, should have probably been something he should have considered. Like, before that first chocolate cake. 

“It’s an original, Jack and all the other ones had tweaks I put in the original recipes, you didn’t honestly think I hadn’t caught on, did you? Because you kind of look like a deer caught in headlights,” Bitty said, carefully setting the pie on the ground beside the “Haus sweet Haus” doormat to approach him carefully as if not to spook an animal. 

He directed his attention to his shoes, because he was really scared of doing something equally not thought out as watching the vlogs if he kept looking into Bitty’s eyes and seeing all the genuine concern and care there. For him. He scratched the back of his neck with his hand, to have something to do with them other than have them hang next to his body awkwardly.

“I just.. Didn’t mention it, because it just.. Felt oddly personal? And maybe, now I think about it, like I was invading your privacy and I’m sorry, but it started with me wanting to bake you something and now.. Now I.. They calm me a lot,” he finishes lamely and he bites his tongue almost hard enough to taste blood, because that last bit slipped out without his permission. Damn. 

“Why would I mind you watching my vlogs, Mr Zimmerman? It’s not like there’s anything in there that I wouldn’t have told you about if you asked,” Bitty grinned up at him, so honest and open and wonderful.

“Including the crush on the straight guy?” He blurts out and honestly, what is the brain-to-mouth filter doing? Can something like that break? Are there doctors that can fix that? And on how short a notice can they come rescue him from this situation? 

“You.. Saw that,” Bitty choked out, swallowing thickly. He looked like he wanted to run as fast as possible and far as possible, so some physical reflex urged Jack to take his wrist so he couldn’t. At least he could count on his body, thank fuck.

“Uh, yeah? And, like, none of us would have cared? I certainly wouldn’t have given a shit? Like, this guy’s obviously the moron for not seeing how wonderful you are, to not be able to see past your gender, I mean eh?” He scratched the back of his head again with his free hand, because else he might punch himself with it. He didn’t know. 

“Oh, God,” Bitty groaned and tried to pull his hand away. Jack didn’t let him, so he looked down and covered his hand as best as he could with the hand he still had left. 

“I.. Uh.. It was you,” he mumbled, so quiet Jack would have missed it if he wasn’t listening intently to every single sound Bitty was making, if he wasn’t so familiar with the boy before him. 

He took a hold of Bitty’s other hand and wrenched it away from his face despite Bitty’s best efforts to keep it there. He crowded him against the door and looked at him, saw his adam’s apple bob, saw him lick his lips. He was barely holding himself back, but he remembered his own thoughts on Bitty’s “straight crush”. How he’d hoped he’d have gotten over him by now.

“Still?” Jack whispered, lips almost touching, but not quite and it was slowly undoing him, being this close, but not able, not allowed to touch and Bitty searched his eyes for a moment before closing the space between them and finally, finally Jack let his hands roam and his mouth explore.

Late that night, after the rest of the team had had their Zimmerman time as well, Jack knocked on Bitty’s door. Here he was again with the knocking, Jesus Christ. 

“You also got a Twitter,” Bitty said after he’d entered. Which was unfortunate, because Jack hadn’t really planned on talking. They’d been doing that all evening.

“You noticed that,” he said, curious.

“I don’t know that many people who’d fit under the name JZimmFalcs and need to be verified, Jack,” Bitty sighed, shaking his head, somehow still surprised at Jack’s social media incompetence. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you?” Jack tries, halfway through a shrug, before he corrects himself. He tends to shrug at everything and it tends to give off the wrong impression. 

And the hand is scratching the back of his neck again. 

“I just like knowing little things about your day. They make me smile,” he says, shyly, feeling a blush rise. Bitty responds with one of his own in kind and Jack’s want is triggered again, because he still doesn't know how far the fucking blush goes, but he feels like he’s allowed to look now. 

“Can I?” He says quietly, tugging at the hem of Bitty’s shirt, who just seems to get redder. “That blush has been driving me mad for over a year and a half now,” he mutters, more to himself than to Bitty as he removes the shirt, but he seems to hear all the same, because the beautiful red darkens and almost his entire chest reddens with it and Jack gently pushes him on the bed and climbs on top of him, kissing every bit of the blush he can reach. 

Bitty spends the rest of that weekend teaching Jack how to properly use Twitter, so he can post things himself. “Because, have you ever considered, Mr Zimmerman, that knowing small things about your day would make me happy, too? Don’t you want to make me smile?” He’d said, batting his eyelashes and grinning cheekily and Jack had not expected Bitty to subtly do stuff like this with Jack’s feelings for him, but he likes it. He likes it a lot. 

Which is why he ends up tweeting about the really nice lady who gives him his coffee on Monday and the epic trip he somehow recovered from without falling during practice and the awesome stray cat who walked with him to the rink and it’s easier than he thought it would be. It feels intimate, yes, but in a good way. In a different way. 

People start tweeting him things. How much they like him. What they like about his performance. What they like about his tweets. Photos of themselves in his jersey. He tries to respond to as many as possible and sometimes just sends mass “Thank you so much!”s, because he feels bad that there are so many people he doesn’t get to reply to. Most of all he enjoys how much Bitty enjoys his tweets and how his have also increased exponentially and how they talk about what was in them when they Skype in the evening and how it makes him and all of these people who genuinely admire him feel so much closer to him. 

A month after this happens, he gets called into the PR Office. He doesn’t know what he could have possibly done wrong. He’s been keeping his relationship with Bitty completely off the internet. Well, no, there had been a few times already when he’d sous-cheffed during one of Bitty’s cooking videos and he might have passed by in the background a couple times, but it’s the Haus. He’s there as much as he can. That’s common knowledge. However, they’re “simply delighted” at how well he’s been interacting with his fanbase, want him to thank whoever got him the media training for this that he should definitely keep following their advice if it’s someone he’s comfortable with and more of that for a couple minutes. Jack’s just glad he hasn’t done anything wrong and is content to leave when he can. 

“The PR staff wants me to tell you they love how you social media. And I do, too.” He texts Bitty and gets a string of kiss and heart emojis in return and after a text or three like that. “I love you, too.”


End file.
